Vincent Danen wrote:
>
> Well, I finally got my hands on a low-end machine (hmmm... that seems
> backwards). This one is a cast off of my brothers and is a Compaq
> Deskpro P60 or something with 48MB RAM. Has a 2GB HDD. I'm putting
> in a 10/100 realtek PCI nic and want to put in a soundblaster. I plan
> on mounting my machine's MP3 drive via NFS on this little box and
> hooking it up to my home stereo. Since the home stereo is a Harman
> Kardon amp with Nuance speakers, I obviously want the best soundcard I
> can get to take advantage of the system it'll be connecting to.
>
> I was thinking of the sb live platinum 5.1. It has that front panel
> with the infrared remote control and such. It's a little pricy for us
> Canadians, so I want to make sure it'll do what I hope it will. Has
> anyone run one of these beasties under Linux? Specifically, I'm
> hoping there is some way to make the remote control xmms if possible.
> I want this box to be headless or, if necessary, have it connected to
> my TV (I have no idea if this is possible... I know you can get video
> cards to bring the TV *in*, but is there a video card to put the video
> out to a TV, and if so, what kind?). Considering how much of this
> stuff is onboard (it is a Compaq), I'm not sure if another videocard
> will work on it (anyone know?). If nothing else, is there some kind
> of convertor to take a standard VGA out to a TV in? Maybe that might
> be the easiest way (although I have no idea if this kind of thing
> exists). All I want is a way to see what xmms is doing so i can
> change songs or something (if the remote doesn't work).
>
> Maybe there's a better way to do this with a console app, like
> mpg123... I mean, I can ssh into the box from another machine and get
> it to start playing, but that's kind of a pain in the butt and I'd
> rather avoid it if necessary.
>
> As you can see, I haven't the first clue about this sort of thing. I
> absolutely horrible with electronics, and I've followed some mp3-box
> "how-to's" out there about buying an LCD display you connect to your
> serial port to display what songs are playing and some really funky
> ways to control the player with a remote. I'm looking for a
> relatively cheap way to do it (the platinum would be the most
> expensive component considering I got this machine free, I don't want
> to spend much more than the cost of the soundblaster card).
>
> Anyone done this or am I asking the impossible? Heck, it might be
> impossible to get Linux installed on this thing... I haven't even
> tried that yet (talk about getting way ahead of myself). Anyways,
> it's a weekend project and I was wondering if someone had an
> experience with something like this so I'm not beating a dead horse if
> someone else has a magic recipe or knows of some programs that will do
> what I want.
>
> Thanks muchly in advance.
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], OpenPGP key available on www.keyserver.net
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> - Danen Consulting Services www.danen.net, www.freezer-burn.org
> - MandrakeSoft, Inc. Security www.linux-mandrake.com
>
> Current Linux uptime: 1 day 5 hours 23 minutes.
You'll be able to play MP3's on the Pentium CPU since it has a math
co-prossecor, but unless you've got a DMA capable hard drive and lots of
RAM the songs will play back real choppy. You need to first load the
selected song into memory and then have the CPU read it from there.
Fortunetly you have 48MB of RAM, so creating a RAMdisk or 6-8MB should
not be a problem. I dont know how, but you'll need to write a script or
use a program that accomplishes that.
You can get SVGA (interlaced, multiple refresh rates) to TV (30
frames/sec interlaced) converters, I have used a few when reparing
computer monitors. There pretty pricey though -> 800 bucks CND+ I would
recomend an ATI All in Wonder to view xmms onto your TV, but its AGP
based architecture... Maybe you should do some research and try to find
an PCI based video card which supports TV out and is also supported
under Linux.
I'm still using my old SoundBlaster 16 ISA to play music with, it does
16bit 44,100 KHz stereo which is all you'll need to play MP3's. I think
that you'll notice more sound degregation from bad cabling or audio
connections :-D
In my opinion, you'd be better off using a text-based version of Linux
with a text-based MP3 player. You could then control the player through
the keyboard. You could even program a few macros into the keypad to
accomplish basic task like play/forward/backward/stop etc...
Stef
